I made the mistake of asking a family friend who also happens to be a high priestess to look over an original story I'd written that had pagan rituals in it just as a sort of fact-checker. You know, look at my rituals and see if they were believable and wouldn't have pagans breathing down my neck about not knowing what the hell I'm talking about. It was an early draft, and I knew I had massive rewriting to do, but it was finished, and I just wanted to get the ritual stuff cleared before starting on it.
If she wasn't someone whose opinion I trusted, what she actually ended up saying wouldn't have hurt so damn much. Basically, in a nutshell, she told me the story was so bad that she was going to rewrite it for me. Literally.
That... absolutely floored me. I actually put the story away and didn't touch it for two years because of that. And later, when I finally did pull it out to look at it, I could see the flaws, but... they weren't that bad, and hell, it was a first draft. First drafts suck. But there was a good story in there.
Then last year, this same person, along with another dear friend, was chatting with me at a party, and she and the DF both said that I needed to focus on my humor writing, that the funny entries I make on my blog about my family are hysterical, and I needed to make a book out of them. That I could be the next Erma Bombeck.
Uh... what???
Yeah. That's... great. But... I don't want to be the next Erma Bombeck. (I feel like that prince in Monty Python and the Holy Grail", "But Father, I don't want to live in a swamp!") And I happen to think I'm a fairly good erotica writer. But you know, that just... sorta took the wind out of my sails. And I've had a hard time writing ever since. And I'm just... done with Harry Potter fanfic, you know?
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mmmag
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Date: 2012-09-09 04:33 pm (UTC)If she wasn't someone whose opinion I trusted, what she actually ended up saying wouldn't have hurt so damn much. Basically, in a nutshell, she told me the story was so bad that she was going to rewrite it for me. Literally.
That... absolutely floored me. I actually put the story away and didn't touch it for two years because of that. And later, when I finally did pull it out to look at it, I could see the flaws, but... they weren't that bad, and hell, it was a first draft. First drafts suck. But there was a good story in there.
Then last year, this same person, along with another dear friend, was chatting with me at a party, and she and the DF both said that I needed to focus on my humor writing, that the funny entries I make on my blog about my family are hysterical, and I needed to make a book out of them. That I could be the next Erma Bombeck.
Uh... what???
Yeah. That's... great. But... I don't want to be the next Erma Bombeck. (I feel like that prince in Monty Python and the Holy Grail", "But Father, I don't want to live in a swamp!") And I happen to think I'm a fairly good erotica writer. But you know, that just... sorta took the wind out of my sails. And I've had a hard time writing ever since. And I'm just... done with Harry Potter fanfic, you know?